Life Through a Lens - Project 365 (PINK!!)

I thought as I was doing a 365 blog challenge that I might take up my 365 photo challenge again too. Not right away though I think a new year will be the best time to start that. But until then I will thought I would share with you those that I took from my failed Project 365 that I started this year.

Today I've gone with a pink theme, it's my favourite colour.

Last Christmas we bought one of those fakes trees where the lights change (gah I'm pregnant and my brain forgets names at the moment, it'll come to me the proper wording though), this is a shot from it.

What better way to relax than have a cozy pair of socks on and your feet up? Of course it would be much nicer if we had a fire blazing but hey you can't be too fussy.

I'm not a bigger wearer of make-up, frankly I don't really have the time but I also hate the feeling of my face being clogged up. Still I do have a few bits of make-up for special occassions.

A few years ago Argos bought out a pink PS2, it was for breast cancer awarness. We needed a new PS2 and pink is my favourite colour plus it was for a good cause. I love my pink PS2 and everyone always comments and gives a little chuckle when they see it.

Earlier this year we had a snow storm that was bad enough to bring the country to a stop, yes remember I live in England, snow isn't something we see a lot of and we are the country that has the excuse for a train being delayed because either leaves are on the line or it's the wrong type of snow we've gotten. Anyhow the cool thing was that Callum got time off school and we got to play outside in the snow... and then warm our hands up over a nice hot drink while our gloves dried out.

Right I've got to go and drink 2 pints of water now, we've got our second baby scan today (our anomaly one). Wish us luck. x

Art Project - Puppets

Letter Callum wrote to Top Gear in 2008 aged 4.5 years old

Those that know my son Callum know what a huge car fanatic he is (earlier this year on facebook he answered a quiz where you had to name the car manufacturers by their badge alone and got 20/25, not bad for a six year old I think) and part of that love is a love of Top Gear. Jeremy Clarkson is my sons hero. So it was no surprise to me when he told me that for his Daddy's birthday he wanted to put on a Top Gear Puppet show and could we make the puppets ourselves. Of course that's not a problem!

Now there are many ways in which you can make puppets, you can use lollipop sticks, pom poms, cut out bits of paper/card, stickers, the list is endless. With us we went the recycle and art box route.

Jeremy Clarkson in Puppet Form

We used toilet rolls and at the back cut a small hole big enough to fit a finger through. Next we scrunched up some toilet paper and placed that inside for the hair. We coloured in the hair and the "body". Next I pierced holes on both sides to put a pipe cleaner through which could be moulded into arms and hands. Then we used various craft objects to stick on and make a face etc. Callum decided he wanted an army, sheriff feel so he made Jeremy (above) a Sheriff and then personalised the others to his liking. The hardest thing we found was getting the jewelled pieces that we glued on to stay in place and dry out, if we stood the puppets upright they slowly dragged downwards and if we laid them down they went round to the back. In the end we just sat there for minutes holding them in place but in hindsight I should have put these pieces on first and used some sellotape to hold in place while they dried and then carefully peeled it off afterwards. Of course there are plenty of ways you can go about making the puppets, you could have used different colours of paper/card and stuck that around the roll. Let your imagination run wild as I say.

As always I would love to see photos etc of anything you make. Oh and to show how well these were made, Callum still has them all in one piece a few months shy of a year.

Here are photos of the others we created on the same day.

Ninja Stig

Richard Hammond whom is actually shorter than James, Jeremy and Stig. Callum made me cut him down to size.

James May, with his hippy pink ears

Art Project - Home-made Clay

With less than 50 days to go until Christmas I thought I'd get in some crafts you can do at home either on your own or with your kids with Christmas in mind. First up is making home-made clay that you can mold into either tree decorations or into anything you want and it can be either an ornament for the home or a gift for a relative or friend.


Ingredients:

120 grams of flour (2 cups)
60 grams of salt (1 cup)
1 cup of water
1.5 tablespoons of vegetable oil
food colouring (if you want)

Mix the flour and salt together and then the vegetable oil. Slowly add the water to the mixture until you get the right consistency, it should be like putty sort of stiff but not too stiff so it holds together when rolled but also not too runny. If you're adding food colouring now is the time to add, put however much you want in to get the desired colour you want. The clay is now ready to use. If you want to hold off using the clay it can be stored in your fridge, just dampen a little with water and store in a plastic storage bag.


When ready to use go wild with your imagination, use either cookie cutters or mold into shapes of your choice, your imagination is the only thing holding you back. When you have your desired decoration, ornament it's time to harder it. Remember if you are making a decoration to be hung up somewhere make a little hole big enough to place some string through once finished.Place in an oven on a baking sheet lined with grease proof paper and cook 250 degrees (Gas mark 1 or 2) for about 45 minutes-1 hour. When cooked, take out and leave somewhere safe to cool down. Then you are ready to decorate them. If you have used food colouring you can leave as they are or you could paint them. The same goes if you haven't used food colouring but to be honest they would look a little dull and boring with no colour on.

Hope you find the instructions easy to follow and as always I would love to see any creations you've made.

Art Project - Invisible Ink

Who wouldn't want to be able to leave secret hidden messages for their friends, or have a diary with what looks like blank pages but infact is written in invisible ink? Well here's how you can go about it.


Lemon Juice

• Either use some bottled lemon juice or squeezer some real lemons, the bottled option is probably easier.

• Once you have your juice either using a paintbrush, your finger or even a cotton ear-cleaner stick write your message on some paper, white is probably best.

• Allow the message to dry on the paper.

• To read the message hold the paper up to a source of light or heat, either sunlight or carefully to a lightbulb or maybe over a heater (again carefully).

• The heat causes the writing to darken to a pale brown so you can read the message.

• Another way is to put salt onto the drying "ink" and after a minute or so wipe clean and then colour over with a crayon to reveal the message.

• Other liquids can have the same effect, try using milk, orange juice, vinegar, or apple juice.
  

Baking Soda

• Mix equal parts of baking soda and water.

• On white paper write your message with either paintbrush, your finger, a cotton bud or something else similar.

• Allow the message to dry on the paper

• To read the message use a light or heat source (as mentioned above with the lemon juice), the writing will turn brown.
  

• Another way to read the message is to paint over the message with purple grape juice.

Wax crayons

On a white piece of paper and using a white crayon write your secret hidden message
Using some watered down paint brush over the paper and thus your hidden message is revealed. You could use a different colour piece of paper but make sure the colour crayon you use matches the colour paper. This method probably works better for very young children and can be used to make fun drawings/paintings too.

Life through a lens - Callum Part I

Callum

One of my favourite subjects to photograph is my son Callum. If you look through my flickr photostream he will probably be the subject I have most photos of. lol. Sometimes he is a willing participant and others not so willing and then there are the "secret shots" I get of him. I'm often asked which is my favourite photo of him and to this date I've never been able to narrow it down to just one and then of course my favourites can often change. There are some that I like because the capture the essence of Callum, there are some I like because it's just a good shot and there are some I like because it reminds me of the moment I caught that photo.

Here's a selection of a few of my favourite and why I like them.

Callum and Dash.

These two have a love/hate relationship. You'd never guess from this photo (well OK maybe you would by the fact it looks like Callum looks more like he is strangling the dog than hugging him) that they do but boy have they had some fall outs. Callum actually asked the other week if we could put Dash up for sale on EBay so that the money raised he could use to help save endangered animals. Hubby pointed out the flaw in this plan by saying they would be lucky to get just £1 for the dog and that wouldn't help the pandas out much. And don't be fooled by the husband, he loves the dog! Anyway I love this photo because both Callum and Dash have a nervous energy about them and it is so hard to get them on their own to stay still for a photo let alone together, this is one of those rare moments.

Summer Fun

Do you see how muddy that pool is? Do you see the bit of grass stuck in his hair? And do you see the bug he's is so interested in? I know all kids get dirty, muddy, play with buys etc, but I'm sure my little monkey monster is the best at it. Seriously that paddling pool had only been filled up a few hours before and look at how dirty he got it, but he doesn't even care he's sitting in a paddling pool full of dirt, stones, grass and lots of bugs. lol. I look at this and think "Yep that's my boy." What I also love about this shot is how long his eye-lashes look. One of the first things people comment on about Callum is his big blue eyes and his very long eye-lashes, seriously he has eye-lashes to make any girl jealous.

No, no, no, no, no!

See he isn't always co-operative, but I can use that to my advantage sometimes. lol. Also this shot reminds me of how he can always get rips in the knees of his jeans but that won't stop him from wearing them, heck even when we had snow earlier this year, enough to shut down the schools, he still went out to play in the snow with jeans on just barely held together at the knees by a thread. Another thing... the boy doesn't stop growing, he costs us a small fortune in jeans, trousers etc.

Snow is my favourite and my best

Although technically this photo isn't good it is one of my all time favourite shots. These two loved the snow so much and I just couldn't get them indoors. Callum threw snowballs at Dash who jumped up and wanted more thrown at him. It's what childhood is about.

An ill spider-callum

This is one of hubby's favourite. He looks at it and tells me it's just a brilliant photo. It's also a rarity to get a shot of Callum like this, even ill he never rests up.

My own little water babe

Everyone I know who sees this photo loves it... and then they ask how wet my camera and I got. Not a drop on either, that's what a zoom lens is for. There is so much to love about this shot and it's one of those "secret shots". It was a hot summer's day, not a cloud in site and the sprinkler on with music blasting out in the background and my little monkey monster enjoying playing with the water. He'd keep running and jumping over and through the sprinkler and giggling away. I look at this and think what it would be like to be a kid again and enviously wish in a way I could.

So there you have it a few of my favourite shots. I have a lot more but I didn't want to bore you rest assured though I'll do another of my favourite shots post.

Life through a lens - Guy Fawkes Night

Happy Guy Fawkes, have fun and stay safe.

What is fireworks without Sparklers and a warm fire to stand by?

Callum and his cousin Alex have a sparkler battle

Brrr it's cold

Firelight glow



Don't get too close

Art Project - Bang, Whizz, Boom!!!

Continuing with the theme of Guy Fawkes's Night today we talk about fireworks.

There are a couple of fireworks art projects that Callum and I do. One is on the computer using basic paint and the other is with black paper/card and chalks although if you want to brave it you can use paint but be prepared for mess with paint.


Painting fireworks on the computer.

• Open up paint
• Set your "paper" to whichever size you want
• Colour fill it black (this is the tin of paint tipped a bit to the side icon)
• Click airbrush (the spray can icon) and pick which size you want, I find the smallest is best
• Pick a colour
  
• Click and hold in the left hand of your mouse and quickly flick up in a straight line, do this various times with a starting point at the same (look below for example)
• Choose various colours and airbrush sizes and continue until you are happy with your firework picture
• The bigger/larger the fireworks the nearer they look and vice versa with making them smaller
  
• Be sure to save your finished piece of work to your computer

Quick drawing I did

Chalk Fireworks

This has always been a favourite of Callum's.

1. Get some black paper or card
2. Get some chalks, various colours are best
3. As above on the computer drawings choose a colour and draw lines going up and out, you can either do this in one straight line, dotted lines or a bit of both, alternate with different colours
4. Continue doing this until you are happy with your drawing
5. If you wish you can give it a smokey feeling by gently smudging the chalk to make it look like all around is smokey

Of course this way you can do various methods, use paint brushes and just paint normally, or use the paint brushes and do flicks to make the fireworks or you could use watery paint and a straw and blow through the straw onto the paint on the paper and make lines that way. Experiment and see what you come up with.

Fireworks Display Mobile

I found this fun little project on a website called Activity Village, rather than do a lengthy post here I'll just add a link, it looks simple enough to do and lots of fun. Here is the link.


As always I would love to see any pictures or photos of your works of art. Have fun and stay safe.